Create a believable illusion through digital compositing and manipulation of images. The resulting image should be realistic, but convey a powerful sense of mood and emotion.
Use only images you shoot yourself: no found imagery, stock photos, or images off the web.
- Plan out your composition. Determine what elements you will need – images of environments, images of things, people, textures, etc.
- Shoot the images you need for the composition. Use different subjects, and different times. Get in the habit of carrying your camera with you at all times. Take lots of pictures of people, places, plants, animals, things, textures, anything you see. You can always go back and delete the ones you don’t like.
Take multiple shots of each element with variations in angle, lighting, and other parameters to have multiple options to use when compositing. Things to pay attention to when shooting:
- Light direction: make sure the lighting direction and shadows will match up between the different elements in your composition
- Resolution: shoot at the highest resolution you have available on your camera.
- Exposure and noise: aim for shots with well-balanced exposure and low noise. If shooting in low light, use a tripod to avoid blur from slow shutter speeds.
- Focus: make sure your images are in focus! You can apply effects like blur and depth of field if desired in Photoshop, but start with images that are in focus.
- When shooting a subject with a complex edge (for example, hair in a portrait), try to use a neutral background. This will make compositing easier.
- Experiment with different points of view or perspectives, different ways of framing the image, and different shutter and aperture settings.
- List of formal elements and compositional principles:
- Line
- Shape
- Form
- Color
- Space
- Texture
- Value
- Movement
- Symmetrical Balance
- Asymmetrical Balance
- Proportion
- Rhythm
- Emphasis
- Unity
- Bring the images into Photoshop and combine them together. Remember you can also remove parts of an image as well as add other images. Use the selection tools to combine the images, and adjustment effects to make them blend together well.
Some helpful handouts